


father dear

by wizardcity



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: Gold & Silver & Crystal | Pokemon Gold Silver Crystal Versions
Genre: F/M, learning to grapple and move on and not compare others to her father, not really fatherlyshipping more like introspective janine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-19
Updated: 2014-02-19
Packaged: 2018-01-13 00:42:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1206508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wizardcity/pseuds/wizardcity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They both lack something essential. — Pacific Rim AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	father dear

.

.

.

There’s no warning, the sirens are as abrupt as they are piercing, ringing in her sensitive, tuned ears. There never is, she thinks to herself - blood pounding in her ears, fists throbbing as she punches relentlessly, sweat carving tiny rivers in her scrunched forehead, her hair swept back, purple in all its glory. She pauses for a moment, only one, to catch her breath, to check if it’s real (it always is) and returns to her regularly scheduled pounding of the sandbag in the Shatterdome training room, alone.

The sandbag is precisely the height and weight of her father and she laughs - it cracks much too quickly: how did she replace her father so quickly and so poorly? The sandbag slouches against the wall and she’s left with a catch in her throat and a ghostly image of training with her father: heavy breathing, the all-too familiar stench of sweat, the small nods of encouragement.

She wonders if in another world, if she were gone instead, if her father would replace her in the same way, with something inanimate, filled with nothing but something soon to be glass.

.

.

.

Her lungs are stretched thin, her knees weak, as she runs home. Her legs are too short, she stumbles every few steps and her elbows are bruised from too many things to count.

She is six.

There’s no one at home and her cries of “Mom!” or “Dad!”, are shoved back down her throat and packaged quickly, a parcel of words to be used another day. No one’s ever home so she shrugs, an apology to herself for hoping too much, and she wanders to the back of the house.

Her close companion, amid shelves and shelves of toxins and various poisons that have all been administered on her, is an old TV.

Janine struggles with adjusting the rabbit ears, clumsy and thick fingers coiling around them like snakes, until she finally rids the screen of noiseless static to something worse.

There’s so much screaming and red and there’s bodies and giants and teeth and gnashing and claws and she just sits there, numb. She stops breathing for a moment - only a moment - when the monster shows up on the screen, all claws and teeth and destruction.

She screams.

Even though her father told her screaming was a sign of weakness, she screams till her lungs ache and her throat burns. Her fingers tangle themselves in the rabbit ears again and she bends them, twists them until they’re unrecognizable as straight lines, but the screen doesn’t fade away into static. There’s still screaming and gunshots and roars, all too much for this little girl, little more than half a decade old.

Her fingers arrange themselves in a perfect fist, like her father taught her and she punches the glass of the television. It shatters effortlessly and the roars stop, leaving an eerie sense of calmness. She hears crickets outside and her hands sting, glass pricking uncomfortably beneath the skin. Janine doesn’t cry. She can’t.

Her father comes a few hours later and finds her amid an ocean of glass; he nurses her wounds slowly, quietly telling her to keep this a secret between him and the late night.

.

.

.

_(don’t make mother worried, janine.)_

_(i know. i’m sorry.)_

_(don’t be. it’s alright. do you want to spar?)_

.

.

.

The kaiju make landfall and Janine continues to try to forget that the world is ending. It’s easy to forget - her town is the farthest interior from any ocean and they don’t have a television anymore. Her mother spends her free time knitting and her father dashes in and out of the house, almost like the Crobat he commands, quiet and quick. She isn’t sure where he goes, but it looks important, so she knows she shouldn’t ask. Koga always pays her back though; they spar and fight and eat with one another on the few days he comes back.

Koga looks weary as soon as he comes back but that mask is quickly replaced with one of joy when he hugs Janine and smooths her ever unruly hair. Janine breathes in the familiar smell of his sweat and she always coughs. He smiles and asks if she wants to spar.

She wishes it would never end.

.

.

.

Koga leaves for a year and what’s odd is that he leaves without any prior hint or knowledge. Usually, he leaves a note or something of the sort, but this time he doesn’t. It’s odd. No other word for it. Her mother sighs and continues to knit, looking out the window, continually perplexed and sometimes wistful.

By this time, Janine is eight, old enough to know the world’s downfalls but still innocent enough to be oblivious to the smaller problems in life. She doesn’t know the thick, rough paper of ration cards, she hasn’t seen the hordes of people rushing to inner refugee camps. Janine is trapped in Fuschia City, without any idea of what’s happening around her. She meanders through her father’s storeroom, she tangles her fingers in her mother’s knitting yarn, she plays endless tag with her father’s Pokemon.

Slowly, the world begins to turn around her, gravity follows its laws again and the sky isn’t the clear blue it’s always been. Janine sees refugees come in and settle in the gym that’s been converted into a makeshift shelter. Sometimes there’s not enough running water and she hasn’t been taking a bath every single day. At night, it’s not much better; her mother stops knitting and attaches herself to the arm of every single man she meets. Janine’s old enough to know that her mother’s lonely. She puts on a false smile when her mother tells that “I’m unmarried” and keeps out of trouble.

.

_(don’t make mother worried, janine.)_

_(don’t worry. you’re the one who’s worrying all of us.)_

.

.

Koga comes back with another man, giant, imposing and muscled to the point of disgust (at least for Janine, she’s used to the lean, toned tan of her father’s own indistinguishable muscles). His name is Lt. Surge. He’s helping Father to found the Jaeger Program, something she’s heard about. Her boy friends sometimes have these robot figurines so that’s the picture she paints in her head.

How giant robots could fight against giant monsters, she doesn’t know.

It’s the middle of the night and her mother’s eating dinner inside while Janine’s playing outside with these fireflies. The lights flicker on and off, an unknown but comfortable rhythm, at least to her. Lt. Surge looks down at her, murmurs that “she looks strong” and walks into the house, behind her father.

Janine quietly follows them, blending into the shadows, like her father once showed her and she waits by the door. There’s hushed talking from her father, a low grumble from Lt. Surge and a reprimand from her mother. A plate shatters against the ground and Janine winces. There’s more yelling and Lt. Surge grunts.

“You left for a year, and you expect Janine to want to come back with you to a war zone? Koga, you left us all hanging, me included. Not like you actually cared, but it hurt nonetheless,” her mother’s voice catches and Janine’s breath catches too.

“I’m sorry, but the world’s ending, Hana.”

Janine peers through the crack and her mother is holding up her left hand. There’s something gleaming on her ring finger, something’s she’s never seen before.

“I found someone else.”

“I know.”

Her father leaves after that and her mother cries, but Janine doesn’t move one inch.

.

.

.

The humans start to win and Janine notices this in the form of more robot figurines - “Jaegers” , she soon learns - capable of destroying the Kaiju to a thousand tiny, blue bits. She gets her knees dirty with sand and dirt, fighting with the other boys and girls over who would win - Omega Falcon or Shatterer? Or would it be Wolf Maw versus Shatterer? Her mind is filled endlessly with facts and tidbits about the pilots and the machinery and logistics. She learns about the Drift and is enamoured; two pilots working side by side, sharing memories. Janine sometimes has dreams where’s she is wading in knee deep blue water and looks down to see her father’s and her own shared memories, when they sparred and when they laughed. Her chest sometimes hurts when she thinks of this, a feeling unknown to her.

Janine wants to drift with her father.

She’s thirteen by the time she has this discussion with her mother, after months and months of practicing - her mother always gets aggravated when Janine speaks about Koga. Janine’s eyes widen throughout the conversation, fervent and infused with energy, as her mother’s eyes slowly crinkle, angry and frustrated. Janine doesn’t stop, she can’t stop; the words spill from her mouth like water from a fountain: “Imagine drifting and I can relive all my spars with him!” or “I wonder what it’s like to see Father’s past?”

Her mother says nothing and leaves ten minutes into the conversation.

Janine is unsurprised.

.

_(well, how did you think it would work out, janine? you are so stupid.)_

.

Almost as if she’s an afterthought, Koga sends a letter after three years. It’s on thin, cheap paper, a seal of approval mashed onto the envelope, his normally neat handwriting scribbled illegibly along the front. Janine feels like she’s dust. She rips open the envelope and the letter inside is pityingly short: a few words of meaningless questions and statements about life in the Shatterdome. Janine knows that he’s busy but it still hurts to have such short, uncaring words written to her.

Her eyes wander lazily down the letter until she stops on a bolded and underlined sentence.

_If I don’t make it, contact Lt. Surge - he will know what to do._

Janine folds the letter in half and rips it perfectly, without so much as a sigh.

.

.

.

Janine is used to silence in her household now; her mother is gone most of the day and her “friends” no longer come to her house. Most of them have entered the PPDC, in hopes of making it into the Jaeger Program. The world is being brought down on its knees, Kaiju making quick work of supposed, “advanced” Jaegers. Whatever her father is doing isn’t working.

Koga became a Pilot the year prior, alongside Lt. Surge; it’s clear that there’s no one left who is competent enough to fight.

Janine sits by her house, at the prime age of fifteen, feeling useless.

There’s a letter in her hand, addressed in formal, red ink and stamped, robotic font marching across the page. She knows what’s coming. Her fingers tear open the envelope and she slowly plucks the letter out. Her eyes scan quickly over the paper.

_It is our deepest regret to inform you that your closest family member, Koga, has died in the line of duty in the war against the Kaiju on February 15th, 2018 on the shore of Viridian City._

Janine’s eyes sting and for the first time since the first Kaiju attack, she cries. They are whole, warm and salty tears, trailing down her face, burning her eyes and stinging her hands. She cries and cries until she feels exhausted and her mother comes later to sit beside her, a neutral expression painted upon her face with the elegant hand of a liar. Her mother still cares, Janine knows.

“I’m going to leave, Mother. You know that, right?”

Her mother doesn’t say anything but her eyes say yes.

.

.

.

She feels like a new person when she steps out of the house early in the morning, to take an airplane to the nearest Shatterdome, on battered and bruised Cinnabar Island. Her tears have melted away into the night and her hands no longer shake. Janine is composed now, she is strong.

When she reaches the Shatterdome, Lt. Surge is there to meet her, arranged carefully into a cleanly pressed suit, something that she had not expected. There was no way he was a Marshal. Janine’s steps are small and cautious as she walks with Lt. Surge to the mess hall. She’s afraid to ask something essential.

“How did it feel to drift with my father?”

Lt. Surge is caught off guard and is startled for a moment, locked in place into that awkward suit of his, like a puppet in strings. Should she have asked that question? She grimaces inwardly but still waits for an answer.

“It was incredible. That’s the only word I know. But it was so painful too. His memories were all of you and it sometimes almost felt like I was the one missing you, Janine.” His sentences are simple and pure, meaning impressed into every single syllable and Janine’s heart rises a little.

“He wanted to drift with you, Janine. He wanted to spar with you. He wanted to do so many things that he couldn’t, all because of this damn war.”

“I know,” Janine whispers, more of a reminder to herself, “How did it feel when… he left?”

“It was like ripping a half of my brain out, it was so painful. Janine, he thought of you first when he was dying. Remember that.”

Clearly upset from this painful exchange of information, Lt. Surge marches away to the mess hall alone and Janine feels like crying again. Koga wasn’t going to come back.

.

.

.

From day one of the Kaiju War, Koga had planned for Janine to become a Pilot. Apparently, all those endless spars had not been all for naught, but a training session for actual fights that determined her copilot. But who else was there that countered her every movement, that knew her every move, that understood her? There was no one like that here. Everyone was inadequate compared to her father.

There’s no point to her spars; they are all the same - the same, practiced movements of the staff and the same pressure of their footfalls against the mat. She’s quietly compliant, because after all, this was what her father wanted. She should at least grant him his last wish. But it’s no use if she doesn’t find a partner, right?

It’s over three months until Lt. Surge gives up on finding a partner for Janine. They try, instead of spars, the normal drift compatibility simulator, but Janine’s mind is tough and stubborn and hard to open. It increases the strain on the other pilot. Janine is frustrated but also oddly liberated: it just went to show how she was meant to be with her father and no one else. She was a certified Pilot, but what’s a Jaeger with only one Pilot?

Seven months in to living in the Shatterdome, she’s called down to spar. Janine honestly thought that they had given up on her and she was nothing more than a never-ending siphon for the increasingly smaller funding. Janine was useless and she was fine with that. There was nothing she could do about it, so why worry?

Lt. Surge is there and it’s then that she knows something big is happening. Across from her on the mat is a young boy, around the same age as her, tall and wiry, bright blue hair swooping across his head. His lips are set into a thin, determined line and Janine realizes quickly that it’s a newbie, but why was he chosen? Getting into position, staff angled at 45 degrees on the dot, Janine waits for him to move.

He doesn’t. He waits for her to make the first move.

This is the first of many things that confuses Janine: after all, everyone she had fought had rushed in, obviously afraid of her skill, eager to gain the upper hand, but not this boy. His eyes intent and piercing as a Fearow, he waits for Janine to strike first. Eager to get this over with, she rushes forward, one hand leaving the staff but he calmly parries, as if it’s the easiest thing to do.

No one’s been able to do that before. His eyes flare and he now rushes forward, one foot suddenly hooked around her ankle - she’s falling and falling and the end of the bamboo staff pierces her neck.

“One, zero,” Lt. Surge announces, a familiar but rare sneer pasted across his face.

Janine frowns - has she gotten worse? Less stringent in her training than usual? It’s not as if this person matters to her anyway; there’s no way he can drift with her. She sizes him up and rushes forward quickly, one foot hooking around his knee and pulling down, bringing him to his knees. She points one end of the staff at his neck.

“One, one.”

It’s a blur after that. All Janine sees is deep blue, like that one dream where she’s drifting with Koga. Both Janine and this boy dance and soar, dodging and weaving, bending back and parrying. It’s a sword fight, a dance and a boxing match all rolled in one and she can’t see anything except the piercing blue eyes of this tall boy in front of her. Her ribs ache from the well placed, calmly executed blows and her knees are starting to tense up from falling so many times, but she feels exhilarated.

Janine ends the match with an elbow to the back of his neck, something she’d learnt from Koga and Lt. Surge ends the sparring session with “Off to the simulator.”

Janine and this boy stand up, coughing and stretching.

“I never told you my name. It’s Falkner.”

Janine looks up and smiles. It’s been a long time since one has graced her lips.

“My name’s Janine.” She forgets about her father for a moment when he smiles back. Perhaps there was someone who could come close to her father.

.

.

.

Janine quickly learns about Falkner. He’s five feet nine inches, weighs a hundred and thirty seven pounds and has lost a father like she has to the the Kaiju. It happened five years ago and he’s been training to get into the Jaeger Program ever since. He’s taken the exam four times. He’s trying to get revenge for his father. She learns other things, his favorite food is mashed potatoes, his favorite sport is basketball and his favorite Pokemon is Pidgeot. Falkner has a particular habit of scratching the back of his neck when he’s nervous and one of his hands is significantly smaller than the other. It’s been a long time since Janine’s paid such close attention to someone other than her father.

But in the drift, it’s harder to work together. Falkner is just as stubborn as she is and many times, they simultaneously try to shoulder the neural load. They end up with splitting headaches and recurring nosebleeds and they never divulge anything in the Drift; their minds are stiff and unyielding, precious memories tucked away in corners not yet seen. Janine sometimes grazes her fingers against memories of Falkner and a man (she doesn’t know who) and she’ll skip across stepping stones of Falkner as a child. Janine is not sure what to think of Falkner yet; he’s odd, uncompromising but complacent, vengeful but forgiving. He’s full of contradictions while she’s always been black and white.

In their free time, they discuss and argue, but never once have they truly sat down and actually talked, heart to heart about anything. It’s like talking through a sheet of cellophane - you can see everything but you can’t feel anything at all.

.

.

.

A few weeks after unsuccessfully melding in the Drift, Lt. Surge decides to put them in a different simulator. As soon as Janine steps into sync with Falkner and the screen flashes on, she feels him shift out of alignment suddenly. It’s like he’s fallen off a building - that’s how severe it is. Her violet eyes shift back to the screen and it’s a simulation of Dictator, the Kaiju that destroyed two cities and four Jaegers in Johto before being annihilated by a nuclear missile. Her DriveSuit feels sticky against her body and she feels her body tense. Janine falls into Falkner’s memories. She screams. Red lights flash and the computerized voice voices its concerns, but that doesn’t matter now.

.

.

.

She wakes up to see that she’s on the shore of Olivine City, a pretty city with a beautiful lighthouse watching over the calm seashore. It’s not calm, though. There’s so much red and there’s broken shrapnel from machinery and not far from her is half of a giant robotic arm. It’s gruesome. Dictator is fifty yards from shore, ripping a useless Jaeger bit by bit, cruelly and painfully. Janine is close enough to see someone still in a Drive Suit uselessly waving his arms. There’s so much red. Dictator begins to roar and Janine wants to scream but she has to remind herself that it’s not real, it’s all fake, it’s just a memory.

She turns around and finds herself trapped inside a screen. On the other side is young Falkner, staring into the television screen with a blank expression on his face. His mother was sitting behind him on the couch, head buried in her hands, tears splotching her floral shirt. Janine sees an older Falkner behind his mother, paralyzed and stoic. Janine has to get him out of here. She bangs on the glass, hoping to get his attention. She hits and hits and hits and suddenly she’s the one drowning - she thinks back to that shattered television set when the first Kaiju attacked. She remembers the roars and the screams and - no.

Janine resurfaces and composes herself. She is here to help Falkner, not to drown in self pity. She punches and kicks for another full minute until a crack appears. Janine takes her helmet off and smashes the glass in. She runs to Falkner. Hands trembling, she shakes his shoulders and stares straight into those once piercing blue eyes, now glazed and lost.

“This isn’t real, Falkner! None of this is real! It’s just a memory!” Janine’s cries become more and more desperate and tears start to sting her eyes but she swallows them.

“I’m so sorry that you had to see him die like this, slowly and cruelly. But it’s not real. You have to realize that,” Janine whispers, pulling him down, enveloping him in a carefully placed hug, mouth against the crook of his neck.

Something warm floods inside Janine and she gasps, not before the flood of memories envelops her mind - she gasps. There’s so much blue, the blue streaks of his father’s hair, the light blue of the sky, the turquoise of the water. Janine sees Falkner soaring through the sky with his father, she sees him wandering and playing with his father and she sees Falkner smiling, above all. Falkner’s smile becomes more intermittent as the memories go on, he receives letters from his father from the Shatterdome, written in blue ink, instead of Falkner meeting his father face to face. Janine ingrains every memory of Falkner’s into her soul, because she understands, how much a father means to him. A father can never be replaced, not by mere memory. Janine fully understands the raw pain he feels, the bitter taste of memories never having been made.

Janine’s eyes open and she’s back in the simulator. Falkner is unconscious, hanging limply, next to her. She hits the eject button and climbs out of the dock. Janine unfastens Falkner and lays him on the ground, gently holding him all the while.

His familiar blue eyes flutter open after a minute and he smiles.

“Dad was great, wasn’t he?”

Falkner’s hand finds its way to hers and a reassuring grip follows. Janine nods; it didn’t matter whom he was talking about, it didn’t matter at all. She understood. And that was enough.

**Author's Note:**

> i. Once again, I write more than I thought was necessary! (final word count: over 4,000)
> 
> ii. This was originally supposed to be a Bianca/Cheren fic but this happened instead; I enjoyed writing this so much! Hopefully I captured both their characteristics well.
> 
> iii. Thanks for reading!


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